How I Podcast: In conversation with Lucia Liu & Lynne Guey

We’re talking with podcasters from all walks of life about their creative process, best practices, and why audio is one of the coolest ways to tell a story.

Anchor
Anchor
Published in
4 min readJul 23, 2019

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Lucia and Lynne, co-hosts of Rock the Boat, mean business. These two entrepreneurial spirits and good friends started their weekly show to create a space for Asian American voices and to highlight those who have ventured into unconventional career paths. As Lucia and Lynne have explored various creative careers themselves, their podcast serves as a place to collect stories from people in their community that they admire — most notably, they interviewed 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang — and to gather many perspectives on how one’s identity and career intersect.

While the co-hosts find their life’s calling, they are simultaneously working to master the art of podcasting. Rock the Boat is their first podcast (now in its second season) and the two take an insightful approach to improving each episode with listener feedback and season recaps. They’ve also learned about working as a team, how writing for the ear is different than writing for print, and balancing their busy lives while publishing consistently. We talked with Lucia and Lynne and are excited to share more about how they podcast.

What motivated you to start podcasting?

We decided to start a podcast because of our own zigzag career paths and out of necessity — there was a lack of resources, voices, and stories that took into account an Asian American perspective on career growth and we wanted to create a podcast that covered issues we cared about.

What is your show’s format?

We pick specific themes per season and take a narrative approach to interviewing guests. Our show starts with an opening that brings our listeners straight into the episode and then dives into the guest’s origin story. We then walk through the guest’s career journey in a similar style to How I Built This and then wrap up with the guest’s advice. We keep each episode to 35–45 minutes and interweave outside clips into the show.

What’s your recording setup?

We keep things really simple and transportable with two Blue Yeti mics and GarageBand on a MacBook. There are times where we will record in a studio in Canal Street Market called Listening Party (shoutout!) but most of the time we book a conference room in WeWork and record there.

How do you promote your podcast?

We post episode transcriptions and bonus content on our website and listeners can sign up for our monthly newsletter to stay up-to-date. We’ve been very active on Instagram, where we meet a lot of our guests, as well as on Twitter. Additionally, Asian American resource groups and organizations will reach out to us and help us promote our content. We’re always trying to find more ways to grow our listeners.

What’s your favorite Anchor feature to use?

We love Anchor’s transcribed video feature. You can take an audio clip of up to 60 seconds and convert it into a little video. We think it’s incredibly easy to use and has been a great way for us to share small bits of our podcast with our guests and listeners.

What’s your best podcasting advice?

  1. If you’re just launching a podcast, plan a launch event. Most of our listeners today came from our Season 1 launch event and have stayed with us since. It’s the best and most effective way to start a podcast with some momentum.
  2. Plan out your content and guests in advance. It helps us tremendously to have themes for every season and to hone in on what types of stories we want to tell.
  3. Have fun with it! Your listeners can tell when you’re being genuine, authentic, and vulnerable.

How do you podcast? Let us know on Twitter and Instagram. If you’re looking for more best practices, check out the previous edition of How I Podcast. If you want to start your own, try making something awesome with Anchor.

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